A Day (Perchance) to Dream
by nonsequiturvy
Summary: Lucien discovers that drinking Freya's blood is not without certain side effects. Post-3.17 interlude.
1. I

He thought he'd seen it all, after Niklaus turned him so many centuries ago. No longer the timid, sorry excuse of a human he'd once been, Lucien had relearned the world as a predator, with fangs and a newfound bloodlust, plus all the perks of immortality. His very existence had become nothing short of a revelation, from the taste of an oncoming storm in the air to the thrum of a heartbeat five hundred kilometers away.

The smell of someone else's fear, his own primal state of euphoria with each new body he drained and discarded.

Every known sensation to him had intensified a thousandfold – the passion, the thirst, the rage, the hatred – and for a time, Lucien was content to assume that though he'd become something of a god, with the power to do as he liked and take as he pleased, even the skies had their limits on how much taller he could stand amongst the inferior species of humankind.

But this…this is something else entirely.

He's never felt so bloody alive.

…

It takes a day or so to readjust to the way things are now – brighter, richer, somehow _more_ than ever before – with a heightened clarity beyond what he'd thought physically possible, even as a vampire.

Regrettably, he hasn't much time to stop and smell the sodding roses; he has big plans for the two of them, for him and his love. For her ill-fated brother as well, whose whereabouts, with a bit of luck and some skilled misdirection on Lucien's part, will remain eternally elusive despite Aurora's most determined efforts.

For the family that he'd in turns loathed and idolized, and for this charming little city of theirs, which has only just begun to see its fair share of true monsters.

Still, all things considered, Lucien supposes he can spare a day to revel a while, to bask in the knowledge that he's already won. He takes a certain delight in watching the empire stagger first before fully crumbling, that exhilarating slowing of time to precede their fall, their _undoing_ , that's been centuries in the making now. Let them have their moment to mourn what they've lost, the losses that they have yet to suffer.

After all, he's waited a thousand years, give or take, for this. Delaying the inevitable another day can only prolong the sweetness of its anticipation. A new and improved era awaits them on the other side of things, once the world has been stained with the blood of the Originals and whomever else that gets in his way. The ancestors' lap dog, that killjoy of a regent. Niklaus' love, though he'll let Aurora do the honors. Kol's cute-as-a-button plaything.

Their dear sister, who'd made this all too possible for him, lending an unwilling hand or two and providing the final piece to this prophecy that's doomed her entire family.

Her death would have been quick, a far more merciful affair that what Lucien has in store for the rest of her siblings.

She never did like to make things easy for him if she could help it, his little minx.

…

He's thought often of the Mikaelson witch, if he's to be honest with himself.

The brusque manner in which she'd entered the fold, her easy dismissal of him each time their paths would cross, had all been…refreshingly unexpected, to say the least. As has everything else about her, really, starting with the discovery that despite every indication on the contrary, she has, in fact, been very much alive.

Of course, she'd slept through the majority of the last thousand years or so, much like her beloved brother Finn (may he rest in peace, truly), but Lucien rather thinks she couldn't have chosen a better time to join in the fray, however short-lived he intends it to be.

He'd promised her death – an awful lot of it, to be exact – and he's nothing if not dedicated to seeing things through to the end, particularly when all else has already gone spectacularly according to plan.

He'd taken every possible contingency into consideration, factored in each moving piece on the board and mentally catalogued their individual strong suits as well as their most fatal flaws. Tristan's shortsightedness, Aya's startling lack of objectivity as far as her precious maker was concerned. Niklaus' overly sentimental commitment to his family and their ridiculous notions of _always and forever_.

Lucien had devoted centuries to making a thorough study of the Mikaelsons and the de Martels, but the single variable he'd failed to account for in all his careful plotting was this wild card in the form of one Freya Mikaelson.

Her presence here had taken him by genuine surprise – a hard feat indeed, for someone who's lived as long as he – though by no means an unwelcome one, for all the untold hazards she posed to his most well-laid scheming. He'd found himself quite taken by this unforeseen…complication, with every inch of her body, from her California blonde curls to the toes of her combat boots, belying an ancient power and a past steeped in more darkness than his own.

He does so appreciate a good challenge.

Perhaps it's careless of him, but Lucien's grown uncommonly fond of her in the rare moments they've shared, with her fuchsia wigs and skin-tight corsets, that smug little edge to her smile, her tendency towards violence against him.

It's a shame, he thinks, that things had to turn out the way they did between the two of them.

As it so happens, Freya had been the most easily manipulated of the lot, despite her stubborn immunity to Lucien's charms and advances. Admittedly, half the fun lies in the chase, and she'd certainly given him a diverting little run while he patiently waited for everything else to fall into its rightful place.

In a delicious twist of irony, her unwavering love for her brothers had provided the key to their ultimate downfall, and it was with no small measure of satisfaction that Lucien sank his teeth into her skin at last, relishing the taste of imminent victory, and of her, darling Freya, whose blood in that moment may have been the sweetest of all.

Of all the deaths to come, hers will be the most lamentable by far – such beauty, such untapped _potential_ between them, to go wasted in the name of collateral damage – but they are more alike than she'll ever care to admit, and if he allowed something as quaint as his affection for her derail his better judgment, she wouldn't be half so merciful in seeing to his own demise.

Still, he might have guessed that she's not without a few more tricks up her sleeve. It would have been foolish indeed to assume that mixing his serum with her blood, plus a dash of ancestral magic, wouldn't come without…certain side effects.


	2. II

He dreams of her that night.

It had been a jarring experience the first handful of times he slept after transitioning, learning the hard way that his enhanced faculties applied to the dream world as well. It was a disorienting thing, to open his eyes and be unable to draw the line between imaginary and not. While the edges of his human vision had always blurred and dimmed, everything muted in sleep, as a vampire they only sharpened, an onslaught of sensation as starkly vivid as any waking moment.

But there will be no mistaking _this_ for reality. Not with the way she's approaching him now – that heavy look to her lashes, the something-like-playfulness tugging one corner of her mouth upward into a smirk.

He sets down the drink he hadn't known he was holding. "Hello, love."

"Lucien." She sighs his name, sounding almost bored with him, but then, when does she not? "What is it that you want now?"

He bites the inner part of his cheek, thoroughly enjoying the view of her gliding forward to stand alongside him. She's worn her hair loose in waves, piling it sideways to graze her collarbone, the skin there delightfully exposed by a sheer black neckline draped just off the shoulder.

"Shouldn't I be inquiring the same of you?" he muses while she reaches for his abandoned drink. "You are, after all, the one who just barged into _my_ penthouse."

Freya raises his drink, catching a wayward drop from the rim with her tongue before tossing back the rest, setting the glass delicately back to the table. "It's _your_ dream," she points out, almost carelessly, as though she has little control or concern for whatever he decides to do with her next.

It's a valid point, Lucien concedes, and he scrutinizes her a moment longer, wondering. Deliberating.

Shifting her gaze from his when he doesn't respond right away, she idly twists her hair to the nape of her neck, drawing his attention up and down the bared length of her throat, that telltale pulsing just beneath her skin.

He licks his lips.

Still, tempting as he finds her, Lucien can't be convinced that this dream Freya would submit herself so indifferently to him, at least not without having him work for it first.

There's a fire in this woman – he's felt the heat of it on more than one occasion, each time he's found himself on the wrong end of her ire – a pent-up thing that smolders, just waiting to be broken out, and today, Lucien longs for nothing more than to touch her, and burn.

"My condolences, for your loss today," he remarks, with a studied flippancy that instantly achieves its desired effect. Freya shoots him a withering look that says, quite clearly, _Spare me_ , and as he angles ever closer to her, she flattens a palm over his chest, fingertips dancing out a warning just above his heart.

"I've lost my brother forever because of you," she says, as if he were in need of a reminder, when the sweet satisfaction of that first kill still sings on in his blood. Finn had never been a priority as far as Lucien was concerned – arguably the least consequential of the Mikaelson clan, and one who'd conveniently harbored a death wish at that. Truly, Lucien had only done him a favor, granting Finn the end to his torment that his own family had so cruelly denied him, and if Freya's this insistent on holding a grudge…well.

He can't say he hadn't warned her.

"Oh, love." He chuckles, knuckles light along her cheekbone, and she gazes up at him, unflinching, as he leans forward, voice dipping low to caress her ear. "I'm only just getting started."

Her fingers tighten, forming crescents in his skin, and he relishes the sting of them, the roughness to her words when she tilts her chin and murmurs next, "Is that right?"

He catches a lock of her hair, thumbing it gently aside, and streaks of green and hazel flash at him through dark, heavy lashes as he makes his vow to her. "By the time I'm through with your family, my dear Freya, there will be nothing left of them to bury in this precious town that they call home."

She stares at him a moment before answering with a sigh, the sound of it almost resigned, "I suppose I have no choice but to stop you, then."

Her fingers have found their way to the vee of his shirt collar, toying with the topmost button, and his own hand grows bolder in turn, cupping her jawline, splaying downward to cradle her neck. They might have been mistaken for something like lovers, with the heat now trapped between their eyes, the intimate way their bodies have drifted together, if not for the promise of death and violence they've made one another.

Lucien's mouth tips up at the corner. "I do look forward to watching you try."

Her cheek presses into his palm, gaze drawn down to linger on the smirk he's just given her, and for one delirious second he wonders if he hasn't read her wrong after all, this woman in his dreams, when the heel of her hand finds the softness between his ribs, hurtling him backward with startling force, and that second comes to an abrupt and rather painful end.

The paneling behind him gives way with a spectacular crack and splinter, plaster crumbling as he slams into drywall and slides to the ground. His breath leaves him in an incredulous, strangled sort of laugh, blood splattering onto the wood flooring, smearing the back of his hand with red as he swipes it carelessly across his mouth.

"There she is," he declares, breathless from the pain, the exhilaration of witnessing the true Freya coming out to play, and he tosses her a grin, crooked and half-dazed, as she saunters forward a step, cocking her head sideways, clearly enjoying the view of him slumped and out of sorts at her feet.

A sliver of wood has lodged itself most inconveniently into his chest, nicking his heart and puncturing a lung – that slow, sultry way she's slinking toward him has already made the whole concept of breathing a challenge enough as it is – and he gropes for the tip protruding through his ribcage, grip slick with blood, growling through the pain as he pulls it free.

He's staggering upright, distantly aware that the blow has also dislocated one of his shoulders, when Freya's steps still in front of him.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she says, sounding the furthest thing from it, and then she's drawling, not without a hint of amusement, "Did you need a hand?" She extends two fingers, jerking them upward, and Lucien's body follows suit, lifting into the air like a puppet on unseen strings before dropping with little ceremony back to the floor. The force of his landing pitches his balance forward, throwing him onto all fours, and he snarls out another laugh as the pain drives deeper into his shoulder.

"A rather impressive show, I must say," he gasps out at last, licking his lips and pushing himself up to kneel as Freya, all fiery eyes and legs for days from his current angle, gazes languidly down at him. "You have my compliments – not many women have been known to bring me to my knees."

He winks at her for good measure, tonguing the inside of his mouth as she levels him with a gentle smirk, retrieving a jagged piece of wall from his hair and trace the sharpest edge of it from cheekbone to throat.

"Niklaus was right. You do have a thing for getting shoved around," she muses, pressing just enough to draw blood, and he swallows carefully around the bit of shrapnel, biting back a devilish grin.

"Does that make this your idea of foreplay, love?" He raises his good arm, dragging a knuckle, then two, up and down one side of her bare leg, slowing as he reaches her hemline. "I'm glad we could clear that up before things got…" he slips a single finger beneath her skirt, boldly testing where she'll draw the line, "…out of control."

Freya hums, her smile darkening to some dangerous shade, and the anticipation of what's to come – be it her end, or his – tingles his spine in delectable increments, even as the hand he's slid up her thigh begins to break, bone by bone, at her will.

He rips it away, shaking his head with a begrudging kind of admiration as the mangled contours of his hand instantly begin to realign at the loss of contact with her skin.

"You never do make this easy, do you," he demands in a resigned fashion, more than ready to turn the tide back in his favor, but she's more than ready for him, it seems, when he rises to stand.

With a lazy flick of her wrist toward the table behind her, the abandoned tumbler begins to tremble, rattling against the countertop before bursting apart with an explosive shatter, a prismatic cloud of microscopic glass bombarding him faster than he can speed away, shredding through his shirt within seconds, embedding into skin.

Lucien sighs impatiently, flicking away the larger shards, but the pieces he can't brush away, the bits that he can't see, travel deeper, reaching muscle, then grinding into bone, and he clamps his jaws together, growling through his teeth, forming fists at his sides.

"Where would be the fun in that?" Freya's wondering, with another coquettish tilt of her head and a sweetness he finds hardly convincing. "And you're all about having fun, aren't you, Lucien?"

The glass digs and digs, flooding his bloodstream, finding other vital structures to infiltrate, and as he resolves to drag her close and sink his teeth into her throat, show her the true meaning of _fun_ , it occurs to him with some irritation that the minx has placed a paralyzing spell on him, binding his arms and feet in place.

"After all…" She presses both palms to his chest this time, spots of scarlet seeping through the remains of his shirt and coloring her fingertips, marking out a bloodstained path as she inches slowly over to his injured shoulder. "That _is_ what you get when you cross a Mikaelson witch with a thousand-year-old excuse of a vampire, isn't it?"

With a vicious pull of her magic, his arm wrenches forward, further out of its socket, and he sees red for a moment, blinding, murderous red, the exquisite rush of pain startling another laugh out of him, and it's a breathless, delighted thing.

"Well you've certainly upheld your end of the equation."

God but when he regains control of his body, the things he's going to do to this woman.

"That was for Finn," she tells him then, voice filled with gravel and honey, the sound of it dropping down to touch him low, and oh but he can only imagine how she'll torment him next, once he's done away with the rest of her family.

"And this…" Freya angles her nose upward, nudging the tip of it along his jawline, and he turns to meet her, lips just grazing her cheek, until his nose is pressed against hers.

Vaguely, he feels his hand twitch at his side, but any notion he'd previously had of ending this – ending _her_ – quickly has faded, just as she'd likely known it would, and the restraints of her magic carefully fall away as he pivots his body flush with hers, gripping her at the hip, holding her to him.

"This is for me," she whispers into his mouth, letting down her guard at last, and he has her pinned to the demolished patch of wall the next instant, arm snug at her waist, ravishing her neck with lips and tongue as he gives in to the hunger, the flame. The burn.

Now for the real fun to begin.

* * *

 **A|N:** This was originally meant to be a two-parter, but then part two got long and this seemed like a good place to stop for a moment. I wanted to see how many of us Freya/Lucien fans are left after the show went a…hmm…different direction, let's say that, haha. Still there? Still want more? I am very happy to keep writing if you'd like to keep reading! (I will also happily bribe you with something M-rated coming up next.)


End file.
